July 20, 2017

Deportations far LOWER than under Obama -- Amnesty planned?

There are between 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants living in America, making deportation the highest priority for making America American again. The new immigrants each year, legal or illegal, are far smaller compared to the giant mass that are already here. Even if we hermetically sealed the border and allowed zero new immigrants, we would still have the 10-20 million illegals to deal with.

The plan from the Trump campaign was to deport them, however long it took, and whoever we started with ("bad hombres" first, sympathetic DACA people last). Trump even pushed for Congress to remove birthright citizenship (only requires a Congressional act, not an amendment), and dismissed a reporter who demanded that he use a forty-word euphemism instead of "anchor babies".

However, deportations are actually far lower than they were under Obama -- a betrayal by General Kelly from the Pentagon-controlled DHS.

In an earlier report on the first three months of Trump, data from ICE showed a decline in deportations from 20K per month in the same period of 2016 to about 18K per month in 2017. That's a 10% double-digit drop. The numbers are similar compared to the same period of 2015 as well. In 2014, Obama deported a lot more -- 29K per month in the same period, for a drop in 2017 of nearly 40%.

I didn't post on that report at the time because I wanted to give them a chance to do better. But now there's a new report with ICE data on the following two months as well, and the picture has gotten even worse. From February through June, deportations averaged 17K per month, and trended downward for a low in June.

Now, those numbers should be higher than under Obama -- how much higher is a subjective question, but any decline from Obama, let alone in the double-digit percent range, is unmistakably a move in the wrong direction. And as with the rest of the outcomes, the situation has grown worse in recent months, when the Establishment slammed the shackles back on Trump, after he had ruled with the shackles off for the first couple months.

The non-excuse given by ICE is that they have such a large backlog that they can't get through them all fast enough. Maybe, but Obama had a backlog of them too -- and if Obama's government could deport them at a certain rate, the Trump government can do at least that speed, regardless of how many more are piling up in the back of the line.

At the glacial pace of 17K per month, there would not even be 1 million deported over all four years of Trump's term, just 816K. That would only be 5-10% of the illegal population already here -- and that's assuming zero new illegals ever showed up over all four years to replace them. If we still issue the number of visas that we are (most illegals are over-stays of non-immigrant visas), they would replace most of the deportees, so that we'd knock out maybe 1-2% of the illegal population.

That is pathetic and unacceptable after the mandate the American voters gave to Trump in the GOP primary, and the general election.

As for arrests, there's an interesting pattern where arrests "at the border" (close enough to it) have dropped dramatically, while arrests overall have shot up, compared to Obama. The spin is that border crossings are way down, reflected in the lower arrests at the border, and presumably ramping up farther inland to drive up the overall arrests.

But given the weaker-than-Obama numbers on deportations, I wonder if they're fooling around with the arrest picture. Perhaps the number of illegal border crossings is not down that much, but the agents are arresting them once they cross the line between "close to the border" and "in the interior of the country". Maybe it's just 10 feet over that magic line. Then they could claim that arrests have gone down "at the border" (true), and therefore border crossings themselves are way down (spin: maybe, maybe not). That is also consistent with higher arrests overall.

If the decrease of border crossings has truly dropped dramatically, that is not because of tougher enforcement but because of the fear factor -- Trump is President, and high-ranking officials have said you're not welcome here illegally, and you'll be subject to deportation. But if that were true, you'd think the fear factor would be striking would-be immigrants from all over the world, not just from Central America.

That would mean a decrease in demand for visas, especially the non-immigrant kind that they would plan to over-stay and remain as illegals. Yet visas are being issued similar to Obama's last year, casting doubt that there is a strong fear factor keeping would-be illegals in their home countries, aside from the six countries that were initially scared away by the Muslim ban. That would mean most of the dramatic drop in arrests at the Southern border is due to letting them walk right over the line where "close to the border" ends, to make things look better for the nationalist audience.

As I said, this is all the work of the globalist elites who have hijacked the Trump White House to sneak in their own GOP Establishment BS through the back door, unless we mobilize to drive them back out.

General Kelly was a member of the Pentagon boarding party (along with Mattis, and joined later by McMaster), whose mission was to neuter or even reverse the nationalist goals of the Trump movement -- Mattis and McMaster on the international scene, to prop up our failed imperial ambitions, and Kelly on the domestic scene, to make sure we keep the illegals in the country (he pleaded to Congress to amnesty the DACA people before it's too late), continue issuing visas in similar numbers to Obama (Tillerson's job), and make a half-assed effort at best to Build The Wall (DHS' solicitation of bids includes a separate track for bids that do not include a wall at all).

Kelly also publicly places blame for the drug cartel problem on the American people, whose insatiable demand for drugs creates the conditions in which the cartels will ramp up their supply. He was head of SOUTHCOM, the military's focus area that is Latin America minus Mexico, and complained that Obama wouldn't give him enough money or manpower to keep Latin America's problems contained within Latin America.

Well now President Trump is in the White House, and has campaigned on literally walling off Latin America from our country in order to keep the cartels and their drugs at bay. What is Kelly's excuse now?

What this looks like now is an attempt to keep the illegal population here, perhaps in exchange for a tough border and lower immigration going forward. And 10-20 million illegals are not going to stay illegal forever, if they are kept from being deported as part of a deal -- meaning they will get amnesty and likely citizenship.

That is an outrageous concession just to get a tough border and lowered immigration going forward. Our goal is to deport most or all of them. Once they get amnesty and/or citizenship, it cannot be taken away, whereas a tough border can be allowed to crumble or actively torn down by future open borders Presidents, and a lower immigration quota can always be raised by open borders types.

Our strategy must be to deport millions of illegals, who cannot so easily come back even if invited, in exchange for making the DACA a renewable and indefinite program -- which could always be ended by an even more closed-borders President, and the DACA people deported as well.

We won the primary and the general election, so we must get the bigger and lasting concessions, while the losing GOP and Democrat wings of the Establishment must get the smaller and more uncertain concessions.

There is no more time for giving the globalist elites the benefit of the doubt, let alone sticking your rationalizing head in the sand. The cold hard reality is that, with Trump having no political capital within DC and having burned bridges with "his own" party during the campaign, the elites are moving to keep the illegals here, give them amnesty, probably citizenship, and dole out a few breadcrumbs for our border wall project and immigration quotas in the future.

It's back to insurgency mode, people -- and they are never going to let up until they are totally defeated. It ain't over till it's over.

I'm really starting to think that a near complete purge of the entire cabinet is needed at this point. Sessions, for instance, was brought in as AG (I'm assuming) to help back Trump and especially in enforcing his agenda involving illegal immigration and instead seems to care more about his outdated war on drugs (more specifically, war on weed) agenda while ducking out of the Russian fight to the point where even Trump is frustrated. IIRC Kelly at DHS is handing out visas after we've already hit the max limit and is caving on stuff like H-2Bs as well.

If these guys can't do what they were brought in to do, why keep them around? At this point I'm starting to think Trump needs to just go for broke because while the administration dithers around trying to fight the narrative of the Russian witch hunt, the Deep State coup is going off with nary a hitch while the GOPe does what they can to undermine him legislatively. As you've said many times, he holds no leverage and they're not willing to bargain. We're getting the same stuff we've been getting from the Conservatives cuckmeleon couched in the language of nationalism and the Alt-Right (something else you've mentioned recently).

To draw a historical allusion it feels like a Pertinax vs. the Praetorian Guard situation where those that have grown fat and happy from their corruption will do anything to see to the death of the man who wants to stop the gravy train.

"At this point I'm starting to think Trump needs to just go for broke"

If they're going to continue blatantly ignoring and disrespecting him, never to deliver the goods on his agenda, he just might make a public break with them, and just dare the Deep State to take him out.

"You're either going to acknowledge my authority, having won the election, or you're going to have to shoot me."

His only leverage is his immense support base, and the level of intensity of his supporters. He has citizen capital, not political capital.

So if they were to take him out, it'd set off a bloody revolution, with Trump supporters vs. the elites.

It would depend on how much the elites were willing to risk that. They're so out-of-touch, they might not even be able to forecast the obvious consequences of taking out Trump, literally or figuratively.

I don't think Trump wants to kick off a bloody uprising either. He's not a zealot.

If the elites screw the people over after the people sent a deal-making negotiator, next time the people will send in the zealot who will make no deals and will be prepared to martyr himself.

"The core issue in the U.S. now is the decline of the middle and lower-middle classes’ purchasing power. The lower-middle class is priced out of homeownership.

However, a family with a median income can still afford a modest home. In my opinion, the crisis will not develop fully until those with a median household income are priced out. Many other measures exist, but I am using this one because homeownership is built deeply into our culture. I believe that over the next decade this terminal decline will take place, and at that point a president will be elected with numbers similar to those of Roosevelt and Reagan, powerful enough to take action, with a Congress fearful of angering him.

In my view, Trump identified the right problem too early. As a result, he ran a campaign focused on broader issues. But what he didn’t have is the ability to focus laser-like on the fact that the system has crippled half of society. He won those who had been crippled and those who feared being crippled, and it was enough to eke out a victory. Like Barry Goldwater, who made Reagan’s case 16 years too early, Trump has identified the key issue and mobilized a coalition that barely put him in power – the difference being Goldwater got trounced."

Wrong about the timing -- Bernie was a hit on the Dem side, and he's the obvious flipside to Trump. When Goldwater ran in '64, the Dems were still firmly in New Deal / Great Society mode -- not a re-alignment election.

Nixon was the re-aligner, partly in the old nationalist New Deal mode (wage and price controls to help American workers from foreign shocks) but partly in the new laissez-faire globalist mode (ending Bretton Woods, opening door for China to steal our factories).

Trump's belief in "hard work" and "The american dream" will make it easy for these people to convince him to do a 180 on his immigration policy. That plus some of the ((civic nationalists)) pointing out about mexicans/brazilians being christians, speaking western languages and using that to justify everything.

The best we can expect from him is probably hardline/reductions on afro-asian immigration honestly.

Trump won't be "convinced" to do a 180 on any major issue. He's the most bullheaded President ever.

But bullheaded does not mean omnipotent.

If the officials in government responsible for implementing the Trump agenda choose to ignore him, or do the opposite of what he says, that's the only way the outcomes will be 180 degrees away from what he ran on.

Trump is a seventy year old who wants to leave a legacy for his family in the form of a nation where the kinds of businesses he built can function in , shady real estate deals, TV shows , casinos and hotels can happen. This necessitates a decent economy and political stability

what he isn't is anyone that can save the US or even someone with a coherent ideology or the temperament of a great political leader

Its not in him.

That said I don't think the immigration news is all that bad, from what I'm reading numbers are down and ICE is busting heads

The thing is no one should expect much in the way of results in any case. Trump is there to delay the inevitable awfulness , civil war or collapse that we face.

As Upton Sinclair said "You can't teach a man something his job requires him to not know" the elite never learn and never care.

In the end US will either sink and fall apart like the USSR, the current cold civil war will go hot when the Left gets power and starts political reprisals or we go 3rd world and slowly fall into irrelevance

I think people know this since from what I read, firearm and ammo sales are mostly the same as under Obama and shows like Homestead Rescue abound . People know Hell I hear open scenarios discussion and its not "Blue vs. Grey" but a war to the knife and hilt without any real restraint , General Joker and Commander Harley Quinn warfare.

That level of hate cannot be contained and its felt on both sides, The Left has already shot at Congressmen after all.

We might get lucky though and Trump may pull it off, I'm not past hope.

I think people know now is the time to harden hearts and as the old saying goes, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

"the elite never learn and never care". They did during the Progressive Era, but there were mass movements going on to push the elites -- the Temperance movement, and the Labor movement.

Somehow the elites surrendered during the last peak of hyper-competitiveness, and we managed to shut down the borders for many decades after having left them wide open for decades before.

The elites also saw what happened during WWI and the Russian Revolution -- and they did not want to get literally killed off like the Romanovs. Bend the knee to the angry public, and you will be spared. So simple!

By the Midcentury, the initial confrontation gave way to a spirit of cooperation between the elites and the people.

If that happened before, it can happen again. We need to put the same conditions in place to force the elites to get along with us -- mass movements to remind them of our leverage (sheer size that could kill them all off if we all met at their home or workplace at the same time), and escalating confrontation to show we're not going to back down this time.

Solid point but a a brief retrenching till the elite get enough power to undo it doesn't qualify as learning anything in my book.

By the mid 60's they were already undermining all gains and by the 80's you couldn't help notice the losses.

Any solutions have to be thorough and long lasting and subversion resistant.

That's not easy with Liberty minded people and out incredibly politically lazy population

That said I have seen what you are talking about work, a few years back Connecticut wanted to confiscate unregistered firearms with door to door searches but being doxxed right down to family members shut that down.